Man thrashed to death in Bihar 'honour killing'

It has all the ingredients of a Bollywood potboiler: love, betrayal and finally, tragedy.

It has all the ingredients of a Bollywood potboiler: love, betrayal and finally, tragedy.

A 19-year-old girl’s love affair with a 22-year-old collegian ended in his murder at the hands of her father and a lynch mob he had assembled, leaving his bus conductor father in a trauma that may never end.

The ‘honour killing’ took place outside the girl’s home in New Area locality of Dehri town in Rohtas district of south-western Bihar, Wednesday night. Her father and two other relatives have been arrested for their role in the incident.

Police sources said the girl invited the boyfriend to her home to “talk out their future”. Once he was there, her father and cousins thrashed the boy with rods and sticks for his ‘temerity’ to develop familiarity with the girl.

“Not satisfied with the assault, they took the injured boy outside their home. Raising an alarm that they had caught a thief, the girl’s kin joined a lynch mob that assembled at their call in beating the boy to death”, said an official.

“We have arrested the girl’s father and two other relatives. The blood-stained rods and sticks used in the murder have also been recovered from them”, said Rohtas SP Manu Maharaj.

Maharaj said the girl, an intermediate student of a Dehri college, has developed intimacy with a BA student of a college in Dalmianagar, an industrial town located four kilometers north of Dehri.

Unable to check the affair, the girl’s relatives decided to kill the boy “for the sake of family honour”. As such, they persuaded the girl to SMS the boy, inviting him to her home late at night and then beat him to death.

“Thinking it was meant to be a surreptitious rendezvous, the unsuspecting boy scaled the boundary wall to enter the compound of the girl’s house. There, the waiting family members of the girl pounced upon by”, the SP told HT on Sunday.Thereafter, according to the SP, the girl’s family members threw the injured boy on the road in front of their house and raised an alarm, claiming they had caught a thief.

“A mob of locals gathered at the spot and rained blows on the injured boy. The crowd dispersed only after the boy died”, according to another police officer who is familiar with the case.

On being informed, the police rushed the boy to hospital where doctors declared him brought dead.

According to the SP, the recovery of the boy’s mobile phone from a heap of garbage revealed call details and SMSes that enabled the police to link him with the girl and crack the case.

“On the basis of the girl’s statement, we have arrested her father and two other relatives, who have confessed to their role in the killing. We have found rods and other incriminating items from the house”, Maharaj said.

The police, he said, would seek their early conviction through speedy trial.

The murdered boy’s father, Pravin Kumar, was distraught. “If only they had told me about the affair, I would have tried to stop my boy. I was educating him with great difficult. With his death, our dreams have turned into ashes”, he told HT on Sunday.